The Hollow Men

, 
T. S. Eliot

                                   Mistah Kurtz — he dead.

The Hollow Men

                                  A penny for the Old Guy

I

 1 We are the hollow men
 2 We are the stuffed men
 3 Leaning together
 4 Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
 5 Our dried voices, when
 6 We whisper together
 7 Are quiet and meaningless
 8 As wind in dry grass
 9 Or rats’ feet over broken glass
 10 In our dry cellar

 11 Shape without form, shade without colour,
 12 Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

 13 Those who have crossed
 14 With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
 15 Remember us — if at all — not as lost
 16 Violent souls, but only
 17 As the hollow men
 18 The stuffed men.

II

 19 Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
 20 In death’s dream kingdom
 21 These do not appear:
 22 There, the eyes are
 23 Sunlight on a broken column
 24 There, is a tree swinging
 25 And voices are
 26 In the wind’s singing
 27 More distant and more solemn
 28 Than a fading star.

 29 Let me be no nearer
 30 In death’s dream kingdom
 31 Let me also wear
 32 Such deliberate disguises
 33 Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
 34 In a field
 35 Behaving as the wind behaves
 36 No nearer —

 37 Not that final meeting
 38 In the twilight kingdom

III

 39 This is the dead land
 40 This is cactus land
 41 Here the stone images
 42 Are raised, here they receive
 43 The supplication of a dead man’s hand
 44 Under the twinkle of a fading star.

 45 Is it like this
 46 In death’s other kingdom
 47 Waking alone
 48 At the hour when we are
 49 Trembling with tenderness
 50 Lips that would kiss
 51 Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

 52 The eyes are not here
 53 There are no eyes here
 54 In this valley of dying stars
 55 In this hollow valley
 56 This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

 57 In this last of meeting places
 58 We grope together
 59 And avoid speech
 60 Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

 61 Sightless, unless
 62 The eyes reappear
 63 As the perpetual star
 64 Multifoliate rose
 65 Of death’s twilight kingdom
 66 The hope only
 67 Of empty men.

V

 68 Here we go round the prickly pear
 69 Prickly pear prickly pear
 70 Here we go round the prickly pear
 71 At five o’clock in the morning.

 72 Between the idea
 73 And the reality
 74 Between the motion
 75 And the act
 76 Falls the Shadow
 77 For Thine is the Kingdom

 78 Between the conception
 79 And the creation
 80 Between the emotion
 81 And the response
 82 Falls the Shadow
 83 Life is very long

 84 Between the desire
 85 And the spasm
 86 Between the potency
 87 And the existence
 88 Between the essence
 89 And the descent
 90 Falls the Shadow
 91 For Thine is the Kingdom

 92 For Thine is
 93 Life is
 94 For Thine is the

 95 This is the way the world ends
 96 This is the way the world ends
 97 This is the way the world ends
 98 Not with a bang but a whimper.

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